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Horses were never bred for their meat.

Early last week Petside announced the halt of an approval for a horse slaughter facility in Roswell, New Mexico, delaying the plant from opening. The plant intends to process horse meat for human consumption in foreign markets. While this was good news for folks who abhor horse slaughter, a huge amount of work still lies ahead to help ensure the passage of legislation to protect horses from slaughter.

Several days later we announced the House Appropriations Committee was scheduled to meet on June 13 to entertain the approval of an amendment introduced by Representative Jim Moran (D- VA) and Bill Young (R- Fl) that will defund U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) horse meat inspectors. We asked folks who wished to help to contact the members of the House Appropriations Committee and ask them to support the Moran-Young amendment and many of our readers took action.

Due to the overwhelming number of people sharing their disapproval with the House Appropriations Committee to spend our tax dollars on USDA horse meat inspectors, on June 14, the Moran-Young amendment targeted for addition to the fiscal year 2014 Agriculture Appropriations Bill was approved by the House of Representatives.  Petside issued a follow up story announcing this extremely heartening news.

The next step in the process is to have the full Senate Appropriations Committee take similar action. On Thursday the full Senate Appropriations Committee will be considering an identical amendment to their version of the FY14 Agriculture Appropriations bill. And to help the approval of this amendment, which would prevent horses from being slaughtered in the United States, once again your help is greatly needed.

Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) will be offering an amendment to restore the language into the 2014 Federal budget which will prohibit tax-payer dollars from being spent on USDA horse meat inspectors. So, if your senators are on the Senate Appropriations Committee, it’s crucial that you email or call them today and strongly urge them to support the Landrieu-Graham amendment.

Let them know that horses are companion animals and have never have been bred for food. These horses have been treated with many drugs that are toxic to humans, making their meat unsafe for human consumption. Our tax dollars should not be wasted to fund USDA horse meat inspectors; it should be spent on keeping our food safe.

Once the language defunding of USDA horsemeat inspectors is approved by the Senate House Appropriations, perhaps we will be a step closer to not only abolishing horse slaughter in the U.S, but banning the transport of horses destined for slaughter outside the country.